


The Fourth Age

by bronson



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, STANNIS IS DENETHOR KIND OF, mentions of Daenerys Targaryen, mentions of Shireen Baratheon, you can tell this was inspired by the atrocities of episode 9
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-11
Updated: 2015-06-11
Packaged: 2018-04-03 23:16:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4118296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bronson/pseuds/bronson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Davos had heard the whispers outside the court. The Steward is mad, driven to it by too much greed, they said. Too much power.</p><p>The palantir took from him until Stannis saw less. <i>Was</i> less.</p><p>***</p><p>a lord of the rings au, yep</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fourth Age

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for inaccuracies re: Tolkien worlding. It's been a while. This is a work of gratuitous AU-ness. Targaryen = House of Anarion; Baratheon = House of Hurin. Seaworth = still commonfolk as fuck.

Daenerys Stormborn, Captain of the Dunedain, of the last of the line of Aegon, and so-styled Queen of the Reunited Kingdom of Arnor and Gondor, was laid to rest on a stone bier in the highest tower of Minas Tirith.

It was late in the day and the sun set over the west, glittering its last light upon the dead on the fields of Pelennor. Her hair gleamed bone-white in the last rays of dusk.

Sauron was dead.  The war was over. The House of Targaryen had sealed the last of its descendants in the immortal stone of the Citadel.

Minas Tirith mourned as though they’d always known the queen. The queen that had marched triumphant into the White City with Drogon, reforged from the shards of Balerio, sheathed at her hip. She had been a fair maid despite her eighty years, with eyes as old as the elves that raised her, and a bearing as noble as the kings of old.

They celebrated her return and when she departed for the Battle at the Black Gate, they threw flowers at her feet until a trail of white and red followed her through the muck and grime of the Pelennor.

When she died, she entered the gates borne upon the backs of her knights. Elves flanked her body, and grief was thick in the air.

Thus ended her short reign.

 

***

 

Davos found his lord in the throne room. He sat unmoving in the Steward’s chair, at the foot of the dais that raised the throne high above him. The throne that remained empty until the rightful heir of the kings of Numenor emerged from the fog of a lost history.

His lord was not that heir. Stannis son of Steffon was of the House of Baratheon, the Stewards of Gondor for the last nine hundred years. The stewardship that passed down from father to son in an unbroken line that was fated for patience, for waiting. For the king to sit the throne that remained empty for countless generations.

Davos himself was as common as mud. There was nothing noble about his name or his bearing. He was the son of a butcher at Dol Amroth, the coastal city to the south that looked far into the vast unknown.

Standing in the cavernous hall of such an ancient place of honor, Davos felt the outsider that he truly was. Twenty years now he’s served his lord, a more familiar fixture in the Citadel than his lord’s own brothers had been when they still lived, yet he could never shake the chill that ran up his spine whenever he was in the room.

 _I’m not worthy of kings_ , he’d once said to his lord. He’d been met with scornful rebuke, his lord tired of his humility yet grateful for the familiarity of it. His lord, who had few friends in Minas Tirith, and fought for his right to sit the Steward’s chair.

After the death of Robert, son of Steffon, Captain of the White Tower and heir to the Stewardship, it was Stannis that ascended his father’s office. 

 _Then be thankful that Gondor has no king. Not yet_ , his lord had said. _Your place is by my side._ And so it was.

 _Where is my place now?_ Davos wondered.

Finally, Stannis stirred. He’d been sat so long, his eyes unseeing, that Davos feared the palantir truly had dealt much damage to his mind. Stannis’ eyes shifted, as though batting away the fog of magic that had ensnared him in a pit of madness a few days past.

“Davos.”

“My lord,” Davos nodded.

Stannis’ lips curled slightly into what could have been a smile if he were someone else. But his lord was not a man for smiles. “Not anymore.”

Davos nodded again. “Indeed, sire. Your Grace.”

Stannis scowled. The scholars would think it an omen, that the new king would meet the crown with such disdain. But Davos could only smile in sympathy. His lord parried every complaint of every noble in the city when he ascended the Steward’s chair. No doubt he would be under fire soon enough for his ascent to a higher office, unprecedented as it was.

With the death of Daenerys came the absolute destruction of the ancient house of kings that ruled the Numenorean kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor alike during the days of old. As Arnor fell into ruin, Gondor survived. Feebly so, but survived nonetheless, until it was the last bastion of Numenor left in Middle-Earth.

But the last of the Numenorean birthright died with Daenerys. Gondor was adrift.

“I will never be king,” Stannis said, his voice leadened with the remnants of grief that scratched his throat raw. “I will never be their king.”

 _No_ , Davos thought, _the people had wanted another_.

“But you must be,” Davos urged. _Careful.Push, and he breaks_. 

Stannis looked all of his seventy years. Though not of Daenerys’ ancestry, Stannis could still trace his lineage to the Second Age. The blood of Numenor ran in his veins and age sat lightly on his shoulders. The sun wouldn’t set on his time in Middle-Earth for a long time yet. Upwards of a hundred years, if his forebears were any indication.

But the last few months had taken a toll on him. Months preceded by years of hard fighting, of devastation and loss, one city at a time falling to the hands of the shadows of Mordor that drove him to unearth the palantir from its sacred resting place.

Davos could still see the cursed, corrupted orb in his mind’s eye. A heavy jewel, no bigger than a man’s head. With it, Stannis saw through the vast reaches of Gondor. It was a tool for the heavy-hearted, that had sown rot and ruin in the soul of the most stalwart man.

His infrequent trips to the library yielded little information about it. A tool for the kings of old that aided them in the safekeeping of their countries—a Seeing-stone that recognized only the kings that sat the throne.

Stannis knew its dangers. With Mordor stirring in the east, the palantir could reach too far and take him with it. Piece by piece, until the Seeing-stone betrayed him, clouded his vision while strengthening the enemy’s.

 _I see fire_ , Stannis had said, when he first touched the orb to his palm and closed his eyes to see far into the night. _I see fire and death_.

For a while, the palantir served its purpose. Stannis dispatched the thinning armies of Gondor the borderlands in the north. For a while they were victorious, and much had been said of Stannis by the enemies that once spurned him.

But Mordor gained fire anew, and when cities fell to darkness so did the man who fought to keep them at bay.

Davos had heard the whispers outside the court. The Steward is mad, driven to it by too much greed, they said. Too much power.

The palantir took from him until Stannis saw less. _Was_ less.

It wasn’t until the death of Stannis’ younger brother Renly, the captain of the rangers of Ithilien, that rumors of his madness spread throughout the realm. Renly, the beloved figure that Stannis was not. Whispers told of Stannis purposefully sending him out to a hopeless quest to retake Osgiliath. He did not return. News of his death reached Minas Tirith and Stannis spent more and more time with the Seeing-stone, desperate for relief.

“The House of Baratheon is not a line of kings, Davos,” Stannis said, but he didn’t believe his own words. _The kings are all dead._

Davos looked into the hollows of Stannis’ eyes. They were the color of the sea at dawn, a dark blue made even darker now by grief. He had lost much in the wars against Mordor. His father, his brothers.

 _Shireen_. Davos clenched his fist as he remembered. _Almost_. It was a close call, the palantir taking hold of Stannis’ mind as the height of the battle raged outside the walls. In his madness, he bathed himself and his daughter in oil, convinced that all hope was lost, that the House of Baratheon was ended and with it the kingdom of Gondor.

Davos broke through the doors before Stannis could drop the torch from his hand. It wasn’t until Davos rushed to take Shireen from the unlit pyre that Stannis snapped out of his daze. He’d looked at the torch as though it was the palantir itself, a hand that beckoned at him, a hand that promised. Promised much that he’d dared to hope even when the lies enshrouded him in darkness.

 _I see fire and death_. Davos knew the words would haunt him for years, but even more so the horror that had dawned on Stannis’ face. The panic that gripped him, unlike anything that Davos had ever seen on the face of the lord that raised him from mud, that gave him lands and incomes, that placed him at the side of the Steward till the end of his days.

“Take her,” Stannis had said, his whisper a stutter of absolute terror that barely pushed past his frozen lips.

Davos, horrified, clutched Shireen to his chest. When he refused to move, Stannis had roared, “I said take her, damn you!”

The fire danced and licked at his sleeve and Davos had been afraid that he would catch fire. That in the end, Davos did not save him.

It’d been months since he’d seen Stannis so lucid; a lifetime since he’d seen him in utter despair.

He ran from the room and took the girl to the Houses of Healing, all the while bracing for the news of Stannis’ death. But the news never came.

His men told him that Stannis had emerged from the halls as though waking from slumber. A gaunt, wasted figure of a man who realized for the first time that a hunger clawed at his belly.

“The line of kings is over, Your Grace. Gondor will start anew,” Davos said.

“You lecture me about the laws of this land,” Stannis said, scorn in his voice. “I curse the day I ever gave you the right.”

“But you gave it to me,” Davos replied. “You look to me for truth, and I give it to you now. You must be king.”

Stannis unfolded himself from the chair for what felt like ages. He was slow in his movements, his strength only just returning. Davos was never certain of his recovery from the palantir. There were times when Stannis would stare at nothing, when he would disappear in his room for a night and a day yet emerge unrested. Troubled.

“A king guards the realm, Davos, and I failed when I didn’t have room for anything else but success.” Stannis said as he drew to his complete height. His hands clutched at the Steward’s chair, his skin tight over his knuckles. For a moment, Davos thought he would fall, yet he kept his feet and for a moment Davos thought he looked the Numenorean king he was now fated to become.

“It was not your fault,” Davos insisted.

Stannis barked a laugh, a cruel sound that twisted his lips and brought the fog back in his eyes. “You have too much faith in me.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke. It was the truth. Davos may look to the skies for prayer, but he looked to Stannis for answers. _What was a year of darkness to a lifetime of service? Of loyalty?_ Davos knew he would never fail his Steward—his king—but had Stannis failed _him_?

“I have done many things to keep Gondor safe,” Stannis said, but he was looking at the empty throne high on the dais. “They were not enough. In the end, it was the rightful queen that saved this country. And where was I, Davos?”

Davos couldn’t answer.

Instead, he walked slowly to where Stannis stood until both faced the empty throne, side by side, as they always have.

“You once said that it’s duty that brought you here,” Davos told him, his voice soft. “Is it not duty that will bring you there?” He nodded at the throne. “Gondor needs you.”

Stannis looked at him, his eyes the color of the sea at dawn.

They looked at each other for a moment, the gasp of war and death and madness thick and loud between them.

Stannis swayed on his feet and Davos’ hand caught his arm. He felt the tremor of exhaustion deep in Stannis’ bones, but despite the spell of weakness, his remained as clear as ever.

“A king needs a Steward,” Stannis said in turn, steadying himself as he leaned his weight against Davos’ arm. “You will be with me still. The Steward serves till the end of his life. Seaworth will serve Baratheon until our lines are ended.”

Davos smiled. “That’s a long time, Your Grace.”

Stannis sighed, but Davos finally saw him find the relief he’s been searching for, the relief that the palantir had failed to give. “So be it.”

 

***

 


End file.
